The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) confirmed yesterday that eight DPP legislators were still awaiting visas to travel to Hong Kong for ROC National Day celebrations, while nine KMT and PFP lawmakers in the same delegation have already received theirs.
But Chen Chung-hong (
"The Hong Kong government usually rejects visa applications from DPP officials. We should not read too much into this particular instance," Chen said.
The 18-member delegation hopes to attend activities related to the Hsinhai Revolution (
However, only one DPP legislator, Chang Chin-fang (
Since President Chen Shui-bian (
KMT and PFP lawmakers have not experienced such difficulties.
Only one TSU lawmaker has ever succeeded in obtaining a visa to Hong Kong and China, while at least half of the party's 13 lawmakers have had their visa applications rejected.
Chen Chung-hong (陳崇弘), the director of the MAC's Department of Information and Liaison, said that the eight DPP lawmakers in the delegation have gone to Macau to wait for their visas.
"If they get their visas approved in time, they will go to Hong Kong to participate in those activities. Otherwise they will come back to Taiwan," Chen Chung-hong said.
Meanwhile, Director of the DPP's Chinese Affairs Department Chen Chung-hsin (
Chen Chung-hsin assumed his current party post at the end of July, the same time as Chen Shui-bian took over the party chairmanship.
"I have a lot of things to do here in Taiwan. And I turned my visa application in very late last Friday. It is not necessary to think about things in a complicated way," he told the Taipei Times, declining to comment further.
According to the MAC, the DPP lawmakers who are still waiting for visas are Lee Chen-nan (李鎮楠), Lee Ming-hsien (李明憲), Chiu Chuang-chin (邱創進), Chen Mao-nan (陳茂男), Ho Chin-sung (何金松), Tang Hou-sheng (湯火聖), Chang Hua-kuan (張花冠) and Wang Shu-hui (王淑慧).
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
TAIWAN DEFENSE: The initiative would involve integrating various systems in a fast-paced manner through the use of common software to obstruct a Chinese invasion The first tranche of the US Navy’s “Replicator” initiative aimed at obstructing a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be ready by August, a US Naval Institute (USNI) News report on Tuesday said. The initiative is part of a larger defense strategy for Taiwan, and would involve launching thousands of uncrewed submarines, surface vessels and aerial vehicles around Taiwan to buy the nation and its partners time to assemble a response. The plan was first made public by the Washington Post in June last year, when it cited comments by US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue
Suspected Chinese spies posing as Taiwanese tourists have been arrested for allegedly taking photographs of Philippine Coast Guard ships, local media reported. The suspected spies stayed at a resort in Palawan, where from a secluded location they used their phones to record coast guard ships entering and leaving a base, Philippine TV network GMA said on Wednesday. Palawan is near the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) and other disputed areas of the South China Sea, where tensions have been on the rise between China and the Philippines. The suspects allegedly also used drones without permission and installed cameras on coconut trees in the
RSS